Pedal, Skin, Ski, Repeat: Surviving Iceland’s Winter With Hestra Athlete Cody Cirillo Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts set out to do something that sounds simple until you picture the map, the season, and the wind. In the dead of winter, they bike-packed and skied their way around Iceland on a 1,000-mile, 35-day, human-powered loop. Their new film, A Hundred Words for Wind, released December 18, tracks the whole push, from ice-choked roads […] Gear Clay Malott | January 23, 2026 0 Comments
The Dangers of Early Season Backcountry Skiing Early-season backcountry skiing is fun. Skiing in fall among the turning Aspen trees with untracked blower powder is a treat, but being aware of its dangers is vital to keep in mind. Related: Why Early Season Snow is Dangerous in Colorado | News Release: CAIC Trees Tree skiing is some of the best backcountry skiing, but early-season snow coverage poses […] Backcountry Clay Malott | October 6, 2025 4 Comments
Brain Post: The Hidden Dangers of an Early Season Snowpack Have you ever wondered why avalanche forecasters get so worked up about early-season snow? Those first few storms of the season might seem harmless enough, maybe just enough snow to cover the grass and get us dreaming about powder days ahead. However, here’s the thing: these early-season storms can establish a snowpack that is prone to instability, which persists throughout […] Avalanche Clay Malott | October 2, 2025 1 Comment
Maritime, Transistional, or Continental: Snowpack Climates, Explained In the world of snowsports, we hear the words snow climates tossed around quite a bit. But what do they mean? In this article, I’ll break down each of the three major snow climates in North America. Maritime Temperature: Maritime climates are typically the warmest of the three climates. This is due to these regions’ proximity to the ocean–evaporative cooling keeps temperatures […] Brains Clay Malott | August 10, 2025 3 Comments
Why Are Snow Forecasts So Inaccurate? You go to bed, a smile on your face. The forecasts are calling for 10 inches this weekend. You fall asleep thinking about catching the first chair of the day, and the silky turns through knee-deep snow that will follow. Related: The Ski Area Snow Report: Fact or Fiction? However, upon waking up on Saturday, you check the resort website to […] Brains Clay Malott | August 9, 2025 0 Comments
Brain Post: Why the Longest Day of the Year Isn’t the Hottest Day Between June 20 and June 22, the Northern Hemisphere leans closest to the Sun, giving us the year’s longest daylight and the steepest solar angle. Intuitively, that should be the time the temperature spikes, yet in most of North America, the deepest summer heat does not arrive until mid or late July and August. The delay, known as seasonal lag, […] Weather Clay Malott | June 22, 2025 0 Comments
Brain Post: Ski Wax and Its Environmental Footprint For decades skiers have relied on petrochemical waxes to make boards slide faster, but that speed comes with hidden ecological baggage. Traditional glide wax is a blend of paraffin, synthetic hardeners and, until recently, highly fluorinated additives that repel both water and dirt, dropping friction by a measurable few watts. Each time a ski is flexed or scraped, microscopic flakes […] Brains Clay Malott | May 21, 2025 0 Comments
Brain Post: Why is Fall Hotter Than Spring? A funny thing happens every September. You pull your hoodie out of summer storage, expecting crisp mornings, but then find yourself peeling it off by noon, as the sun feels closer to July than January. The calendar says we are sliding toward winter, yet the air insists on replaying summer’s greatest hits. The flip side of the story shows up […] Brains Clay Malott | May 15, 2025 0 Comments
Depth, Cold, Danger: What a 24-Year Satellite Study Just Revealed About Avalanches Imagine a north-facing slope in mid-February. The snow is deep, the air bitterly cold, and every few minutes you hear the distant whump of a settling slab. A new 24-year satellite study of the Altai Mountains in East Kazakhstan confirms what those sounds already whisper to backcountry skiers: avalanche danger starts and ends with snow depth and temperature. In fact, […] Avalanche Clay Malott | May 12, 2025 0 Comments
Turns All Year: A Guide for How to Ski Every Month of the Year in North America Ask any die-hard skier what keeps them up at night in the swelter of July, and odds are they’ll mention three innocent-sounding letters: TAY… Turns All Year. The idea is seductively simple: ski at least once every single month, no matter what the calendar or the weather says. The execution, however, is anything but. It demands early-morning alarms that ring […] Backcountry Clay Malott | April 28, 2025 9 Comments
From Silver Boom to Powder Legend: The Alta Ski Area Story High in Little Cottonwood Canyon, dawn breaks with the echoing boom of avalanche cannons across serrated peaks–a morning ritual at Alta Ski Area that hints at its rich and restless history. Few ski resorts can claim a genesis as dramatic as Alta’s: a silver mining boomtown turned ghost town, resurrected in 1938 as a skier’s paradise atop Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. […] Clay Malott | March 26, 2025 0 Comments
Mount Spurr Rumbling: Alaska Volcano Unrest Spurs Eruption Watch Alaska’s Mount Spurr—a 11,070-ft glacier-clad volcano 75 miles west of Anchorage—is showing worrisome signs of life. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) reports elevated seismic activity with numerous small, shallow earthquakes now detected daily beneath the mountain. Over the past month, more than 100 quakes per week have been recorded, some up to magnitude 2.7, totaling thousands of tremors since last […] Clay Malott | March 12, 2025 0 Comments
Vanished Slopes: Inside the Demise of North America’s Ghost Ski Resorts On a frosty morning in Michigan’s Leelanau County, the chairlifts at Sugar Loaf Mountain hang lifeless, and the once-luxurious lodge lies in rubble. It’s a scene echoed in dozens of locations across North America. In fact, nearly 60% of all ski resorts in North America have closed since the boom of the 1960s and ’70s. Economic shifts, warming winters, and […] Clay Malott | March 3, 2025 1 Comment
Skiing on the Equator: Investigating the Mythical Puncak Jaya Ski Resort Puncak Jaya—also known as the Carstensz Pyramid—is a 4,884-meter (16,024-foot) peak in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia, famed as the only place in the equatorial Pacific with year-round ice. In recent years, an intriguing rumor has circulated: that a ski resort once operated on the slopes of Puncak Jaya, making it the world’s second-highest ski area despite its tropical location. […] Clay Malott | February 14, 2025 1 Comment
The Daring Ski-Hayden Dream: War, Ambition, and Aspen’s Greatest “What if?” In the 1930s, a group of daring visionaries believed they could build a European-style ski resort high in the Colorado Rockies that might one day rival the grand destinations of the Alps. Their chosen site was Mount Hayden, rising above the ghost town of Ashcroft near Aspen—a snowy paradise they hoped would become a winter sports haven, complete with cutting-edge […] Clay Malott | February 13, 2025 0 Comments
Slippery Slopes: Climate Change Threatens the Future of Skiing in North America At the base of a Massachusetts ski hill one recent November, sunlight glared off a patch of sloppy snow “pooling like dirty mashed potatoes” as the thermometer hit 59°F.1 Scenes like this–unseasonable warmth turning early-season snow to slush–are becoming familiar across the United States and Canada. Ski resort operators and skiers are sounding the alarm that winters are warming, snowpacks […] Brains Clay Malott | February 6, 2025 1 Comment
Brain Post: Groundhog Day – Origins, Accuracy, and Cultural Quirks Every February 2, millions tune in (or head out) to see if a furry forecaster will predict the end of winter. In this post, we dig deep into the origins of Groundhog Day, the legend of Punxsutawney Phil, and what the data really says about his predictive prowess. The Origins of Groundhog Day Groundhog Day finds its roots in ancient […] Clay Malott | February 1, 2025 0 Comments
A Day in the Life on Spring Break in Jackson Hole, WY Spring mornings in the Tetons have a distinct flavor. The first rays of light touch the upper ridges, illuminating untouched snowfields where skiers and riders hope for that perfect combination of powder on shaded north-facing slopes and spring corn on the sunnier ones. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort‘s Aerial Tram ascends swiftly, carrying early risers whose breath fogs in the crisp […] Featured Article Clay Malott | January 29, 2025 0 Comments
SnowBrains PNW Forecast: Massive Christmas Storm Cycle Will Bring 5+ Feet This Week This forecast was created at 2:00 a.m. PST on Saturday, December 21 A broad, mild weather pattern will keep snow levels high for much of the upcoming stretch, but a series of storms will deliver steadily accumulating snowfall to the mountains from Saturday through next weekend. Some valleys will see more rain than snow due to these elevated snow levels, […] Weather Clay Malott | December 21, 2024 0 Comments
Google DeepMind’s GenCast Sets New Standard for Medium-Range Mountain Forecasting High-stakes decisions in the alpine depend on getting the forecast right. A month’s worth of anticipation can hinge on whether a distant storm sets up over the northern Rockies or takes a hard turn somewhere over the Pacific. At a time when sudden thaws, unusual precipitation patterns, and volatile storm tracks are becoming all too common, the value of pinpointing […] Weather Clay Malott | December 11, 2024 0 Comments
Clay Malott
Gear
Backcountry
Avalanche
Brains
Weather
Featured Article
